PASADENA, Calif. - In 1920, says the California Institute of Technology's John Brewer, the art dealer Joseph Duveen dismissed an alleged Leonardo da Vinci painting, "La Belle Ferronniere," as a copy or a fake. His opinion initiated a decade-long lawsuit and courtroom drama dubbed "the battle of the experts," in which the art connoisseur's eye and the tools of modern science were locked in conflict.
On Wednesday, April 13, at 8 p.m., Brewer, the Eli and Edye Broad Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of history and literature, will present his talk, "Art and Science: A Da Vinci Detective Story," in which he will discuss the changing relationship between technology and the human eye in the task of identifying and attributing great works of art. His talk is part of the ongoing Ernest C. Watson Lecture Series.
Brewer's chief areas of research interest are eighteenth-century British history and literature, the history of early-modern Europe, the history and theory of consumption, twentieth-century historiography, and contemporary issues in cultural policy. In the last few years he has been working on a series of essays on art markets and values, including essays on forgery, reproductions, cultural patrimony, patronage, and the responsibilities of the curator. Brewer is the author of, among other works, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, and A Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the Eighteenth Century.
Caltech has offered the Watson Lecture Series since 1922, when it was conceived by the late Caltech physicist Earnest Watson as a way to explain science to the local community. Seating for this free public event in Beckman Auditorium on the Caltech campus is on a first-come, first-served basis, beginning at 7:30 p.m.
For more information, contact Public Events at 1 (888) 2CALTECH, (626) 395-4652, or events@caltech.edu, or visit www.events.caltech.edu. Individuals with a disability can call (626) 395-4688 (voice) or (626) 395-3700 (TDD). All lectures will be available online at Caltech's Streaming Theater, http://today.caltech.edu/theater.